


Count Basilton

by snowkatze



Series: Carry On One-Shots [63]
Category: Carry On Series - Rainbow Rowell
Genre: Dracula Influence/References, Established Relationship, Fluff and Crack, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Book 1: Carry On, Pre-Book 2: Wayward Son, SO MUCH BANTER
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-28
Updated: 2020-10-28
Packaged: 2021-03-09 03:35:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27238138
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/snowkatze/pseuds/snowkatze
Summary: First, Simon gets deceived by a bat into thinking the bat is his vampire boyfriend, then he starts reading Dracula and pesters Baz in vampire matters. Baz has an altogether bad time.
Relationships: Tyrannus Basilton "Baz" Pitch/Simon Snow
Series: Carry On One-Shots [63]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2199159
Comments: 8
Kudos: 58





	Count Basilton

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starwarned](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starwarned/gifts).



> This fic is for the Carry On exchange! I tried to make it light-hearted and pre-Wayward Son. The result is vampire shenanigans and 95% banter. I hope you enjoy!

Really, it was all the bat’s fault. First, the obvious – serious case of breaking and entering. (Well, except for the breaking. But the entering was all on the bat!) Secondly, posing as an imposter and doing an awfully good impression of someone it wasn’t.  
  
In Simon’s memory, events had transpired like this:  
  
Simon, minding his own business, waiting for Baz to come from uni, and suspecting no evil, sauntered into the living room and then a fluttering ball of black shot in his direction. He let out a high-pitched shriek and ducked behind the sofa. Then, with the smart courage of someone who knew his way around a sword, he peaked over the sofa. A closer glance at the home invader told him all he needed to know. Body the size of a large mouse, black leathery wings, quick movements. It must have been –  
  
“Baz? Is that you?”  
Slowly, Simon righted his body and stepped out from behind the sofa. Not a home invader, then. After all, as everyone knows, vampires can only enter houses invited.  
  
“Baz, calm down! It’s going to be okay,” he said, despite not knowing how the situation of Baz accidentally turning himself into a bat could turn out okay. In his experience, these things tended to work themselves out eventually.  
  
Baz continued to flutter around the room, flying circles close to the ceiling.  
“Will you just stay still?”  
  
But Baz, of course, being Baz, was too stubborn to listen. He knocked into the ceiling fan and kept flying.  
  
“Wait – are you doing this on purpose? You are, aren’t you? You’re mad at me.”  
  
Simon tried to approach, but Baz kept evading him.  
  
“I’ve had a long day too, you know?” Simon waves his hand in Baz’ general direction. “Whatever this is, it’s not necessary. You don’t need to punish me.”  
Baz simply chirps from the opposite side of the room.  
  
“Oh, like you’re so perfect! You never clean the dishes, you use air pods,” Simon was getting agitated now, “and you know what? You’re not even that handsome as a bat.”  
In that moment, the bat stilled.  
  
“I said what I said.”  
  
Baz started moving again, flying toward the window.  
  
“No, wait,” Simon started. “Come back. I love you anyway.”  
  
He tried to get to the window before Baz, but tripped over his own feet. Suddenly there was a noise from the door and Simon lifted his head of the floor. What was – Baz. Simon’s boyfriend. Standing in the doorway. Surprisingly human-shaped.  
  
“This isn’t what it looks like?”  
  
Baz stared at him. Simon stared back. The moment stretched out long between them.  
  
“Honey, I’m home,” Baz said tonelessly.  
  
_Baz_. Baz was here. Baz had, most probably, not duplicated himself.  
  
“I’m sorry. I hadn’t noticed.”  
“Clearly.”  
  
The bat – not Baz, Baz would surely have been more graceful than this, took the awkward silence as an opportunity to slip out of the window.  
  
“It’s an honest mistake,” Simon tried.  
  
Now, some might say, Simon’s initial conclusion had been wildly irrational, but in Simon’s defence, Baz had been late, Baz had not been arriving, and Simon had been thinking about Baz. So, there’s that.  
  
Baz still didn’t take his eyes off of Simon.  
  
“Let me just make sure I’m getting this right,” he said slowly, “either you’re having an outrageous love affair with that bat, or you got it into your head that the bat was me so you had a row with it, or, and this is by far the most likely option, I’m hallucinating.”  
  
Simon thought it was only decent to blush.  
  
“I got it wrong, okay? I’m admitting it. It was just a home invasion after all.”  
“If anyone’s a victim here, it’s the bat,” Baz said, and if Simon wasn’t imagining it, he was saying it fondly.  
  
That evening, Baz left three dirty plates that Simon hadn’t even seen him use on the dining table.

* * *

  
  
The thing was, Simon couldn’t get the bat out of his head. So the bat hadn’t been Baz, so far so good. But that didn’t mean that Baz couldn’t, hypothetically, turn into a bat. Maybe he just wasn’t aware of his bat powers yet. He certainly wasn’t ready to channel it.  
  
So it was also the bat’s fault that Simon started to read a copy of Stoker’s Dracula. And it’s surely, though not provably, the bat’s fault that Simon started to drink wine while he was reading it.  
  
“What are you doing?” Baz asked right after he entered the living room, being perfect and awe-inspiring all over the place.  
“Research.” Simon got a questioning glance. “Yup, you’re not the only one who’s an – in - a intellectual.”  
  
Baz frowned and came closer.  
  
“Be honest – have you been drinking?”  
“You be honest!” Simon accused – threatened – no, demanded. “Can you order animals around?”  
  
Questions were good, Simon found, because, as all YouTube videos about relationships know, honest communication is everything. You needed to communicate if you wanted to keep someone. And Baz – Baz never had a hair out of place, and if he did it was artfully styled to make him even more beautiful. His only flaw had ever been being evil and now he didn’t even have that going against him anymore. And was somehow so far away, even when he was close.  
  
“Anyone can order animals around, they just probably won’t listen, seeing that they can’t comprehend human speech.”  
“Okay, I hear you, but what about –“ Simon lowered his voice, as if to tell a secret, “- vampire speech?”  
“Oh, Merlin, what are you reading?”  
  
Baz snatched the book out of Simon’s hands and turned it to look at the cover. He sighed. “Well, at least it’s not Twilight.”  
“I do have some taste – kidding, they didn’t have it at the store.”  
“I see you’re not denying you don’t have any taste.”  
  
Baz smirked the way he always did when he was winning an argument. Simon huffed.  
  
“Obviously. I like _you_ , after all.”  
  
Baz sighed again – he did that a lot – and flopped down next to Simon on the sofa.  
  
“Your worst mistake yet,” Baz said softly.  
  
Baz’s hair was going the soft wave-thing again, but Simon kept his arms at his side.  
  
“You could make it up to me,” Simon tapped the book. “Tell me if you have freaky telepathy powers.”  
  
“If I did, I’d have long since used them to get your mind off of vampirism.”  
  
Simon wasn’t going to let himself be deterred.  
  
“Is it true you can only be killed by a stake through the heart?”  
“I’ll test it for you myself if you keep asking stupid question.”  
  
Simon gently slapped Baz’ chest.  
“You’re not honestly communicating!”  
  
Baz leaned back on the sofa, irritation clear on his face.  
  
“Fine then,” Simon said, “I’ll start. I’m going to tell you something honest.”  
“Are you sure it’s not going to be more drunk gibberish?”  
“I’m not drunk. If anything, I’m drunk-ish. Shut up, I’m trying to say something.”  
  
Simon said nothing for a while.  
  
“So, so, you know your nose, right?”  
“I know I have one,” Baz said slowly.  
  
“You do do have one, that’s true. But thing is, it used to be like reeeally straight and just as perfect as the rest of your face. But now, it’s a little crooked, did you know that? That was me. Me in your face. And your lips! They’re all thin and pretty-like. And there’s so many edges. Did you know that?”  
  
“I –“ a pause so small Simon almost didn’t notice, “I do have a mirror.”  
  
“But you don’t _see_ , do you? You don’t see what I do.”  
  
Baz’s pale face was turning a little red and it was beautiful and he couldn’t even see, could he? He didn’t know.  
  
“I doubt it,” Baz said. “You have a strange way of looking at the world.”  
  
“It’s so, so beautiful. It’s ridiculous. It’s not fair.”  
  
Simon felt very tired, but he kept thinking of Baz’s stunning face and the undisputable fact that vampires couldn’t see themselves in mirrors.  
  
“Your smile, though,” Simon murmured. “That’s the best part. Did you know?”  
  
“I think you should go to sleep.”  
  
Baz was putting a blanket on him, Simon thought, but he couldn’t be sure.  
  
“Can you conjure mist?” he said and blinked up at Baz, though his eyelids were heavy and really, wasn’t it easier just to close them?  
“Only if the moment calls for it.”  
  
Simon drifted off with Baz’s soft voice in his ear.

* * *

  
  
“We need to talk about the bat,” Baz announced the next day, on the living room sofa, while Simon was only mildly hung over and scrolling through his phone on the other end of the sofa.  
  
“Don’t worry,” Simon said, sprawling a little further. “It didn’t even call again.”  
  
Baz was not having it.  
  
“Simon,” he said in a tone that told Simon he wouldn’t like what came next.  
  
“Look, I wasn’t really thinking,” Simon began to defend himself, “I got swept up in the –“  
“That’s not what this is about.”  
  
“Really? You don’t think I’m crazy?”  
“Oh, you’re definitely crazy. You’re a lunatic with a sword and that’s part of the reason why-”  
  
Baz cut himself off and took a deep breath.  
  
“Just listen,” he started again. “It’s about what you said.”  
“You’re not still offended about the thing with the air pods, right?”  
“You told the bat you loved it.”  
  
Simon went quiet. Looked down on his phone. Looked up again.  
  
“Oh.”  
  
Baz pressed his lips together. A ball of strange feelings started to grow in Simon’s stomach. He wanted to walk out of the room. He wanted to throw up.  
  
“And you’ve told _me_ you like me. Like.”  
“I do like you,” Simon said quietly.  
“And I get it,” Baz said, “it might be easier to pretend a bat is… To say it when it’s not real.”  
  
Simon chewed on his lip, felt like he had said too much already. He looked down on himself, the loose sweatpants, the stain on his t-shirt. He looked up at Baz, the expensive watch, the fancy shirt, the _jeans_.  
  
“A bat can’t reject you,” he said carefully then.  
“It definitely rejected you when it flew for the hills,” Baz said, although he frowned afterwards, like he hadn’t meant to. “I mean…”  
  
He looked so unsure, at a loss for words, like he never was. Did Simon draw that out of him? Did he hate it here, on the worn-down couch next to Simon? But then Baz started to smile, even if it was kind of lopsided and shaking slightly.  
  
“If that’s why…” he finally managed to say. “I mean, so do I.”  
  
Simon cracked a smile at that. And he took Baz’s hand to press a kiss to it. And felt a little lighter than before.  
  


* * *

  
  
Another day, another stellar opportunity to get on Baz’s nerves.  
  
“Baz! You didn’t tell me you could crawl up the walls like a lizard,” Simon said, waving his copy of Dracula in front of Baz’s face, who was sitting at the dining table trying to drink coffee.  
  
“Shut up, Snow.”  
  
“We’re dating, you’re not allowed to call me Snow.”  
  
“Simon,” Baz said, sweetly but not softly. “Shut the fuck up.”  
  
“You know I love you anyway, lizard-man.”  
  
Baz scowled. “I can _not_ crawl – actually, there might be a spell for that. Maybe something like ‘ ** _Our friendly neighbourhood spiderman_** ’ would do it.”  
“The book said lizard, not spider! Don’t lie to me.”  
  
Baz rolled his eyes and went back to stirring sugar into his coffee.  
  
“Baz, Baz, Baz,” Simon said after a few minutes, waving the book again. “I’ll give you five bucks if you turn into a bat for me.”  
  
“How many times do I have to say this? I can’t turn into – or, well. I need to test something.”  
  
Baz cleared his throat. He grabbed his wand and said, lowering his voice very deeply: “ ** _Because I’m batman_**.”  
  
Nothing happened.  
  
Simon laughed so hard he nearly toppled over. Baz gave him an offended look and started to say something, but Simon waved him away and laughed harder.  
  
“Why didn’t it work?” Baz mumbled. “It probably only works if you haven’t seen any of the movies.”  
  
“Your impression was obviously not good enough,” Simon said between laughter.  
  
“Oh, shut up,” Baz said. “In fact, give me that infernal book. I’m burning it.”  
  
Baz made to grab the book, but Simon quickly ducked away and darted out of the room. Baz ran after him and tackled Simon to the sofa. Simon laughed and held the book above his head, but Baz was suddenly too distracted to try and take it.  
  
“One thing we have learned though,” Simon said later, when they were lounging on the bed, “Dracula is definitely a superhero.”  
  


**Author's Note:**

> And that was it, "Count Basilton", otherwise known as "I had to read Dracula for uni and am still not over it".
> 
> Thanks for reading! Any comment or kudos is appreciated :)


End file.
